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5 months since first meeting (December, Year 1)
I bounced around my tiny kitchen, pinging from the counter to the coffee hutch then to the fridge and back again, gathering ingredients and utensils and tossing things into the sink as I used them. I heard his deep chuckle behind me and turned to frown apologetically over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, I know I’m not being a very good hostess right now. I just, I have to get this stuff made. It’s tradition.” I bent to pull my largest mixing bowl from a low drawer to my right then set it on the counter next to the two cartons of eggs I’d already pulled from the fridge.
“Hey, stop.” I turned toward him again to protest but he leveled me with a look. “You don’t owe me any hostess-ing after I just invited myself here for the weekend.”
I rolled my eyes as I turned a little more toward him, my palm flat on the countertop and my weight shifted to one side to lean my hip against the edge of the counter. “You did not invite yourself.”
He laughed again. “Oh, I definitely did.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but I looked over at him, sitting at my dining room table with one arm resting on the table, almost behind him, and the other hanging at his side to indulge Millie as she demanded pets, one eyebrow lifted and a corner of his mouth pulled up in a cocky smirk, and I felt my own eyes falling closed as I laughed. “Okay, fine, you kinda did.” He groaned quietly and dropped his head until his chin fell to his chest. “But it’s good! I’m glad you did.”
“Yeah?” He looked up at me through his lashes.
I nodded. “The kids are going to be thrilled to see you.” And they would be. The other time he’d shown up unexpectedly, to a rehearsal about a week before their first competition, I’d practically had to peel some of them off the floor. Then when I’d called him from the bus after they’d won that competition, several of them seemed to consider that more of a win than the actual medals and trophy they’d left with. Even better, though, and more importantly, he’d been an incredible coach and mentor to them not only at that first visit, but since, watching videos of their rehearsals and providing guidance and feedback that was better than anything I could have given them. Seeing him at the school the following morning when they all showed up to load the bus to head to the state championship would be the confidence and morale boost that they didn’t even really need, but that they - we - would all appreciate.
He cleared his throat and nodded, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. “Right. Well,” his hand flew up off the table for a second then fell again, his thumb and middle finger tapping out a rhythm-less beat, “I’m glad I can make them happy.”
I smiled softly at him then turned my back to him, my attention back on the mixing bowl and the eggs. I cracked the first egg into the bowl and dropped the shell back into the empty spot in the carton then admitted, quietly, “I’m thrilled too. As soon as you mentioned it, I got really excited. It was really nice, the last time you were here.” I turned my head just enough to be able to see him out of the corner of my eye and he was ducking to press his forehead to Millie’s as he scratched her ribs with both hands, but I caught the smile that tugged at both his lips and his eyes. When he didn’t say anything right away, I went back to the task at hand, cracking one egg after another into the mixing bowl until I’d made it all the way through the first carton.
“What are you doing, anyway?” he asked after a couple minutes, and I didn’t turn around because I’d just started grinding pepper into the eggs and turning my head would almost certainly have resulted in my hands moving away from the bowl and pepper getting everywhere, but I could tell that his voice was much, much closer. “I mean, obviously I can tell you’re cooking, and you said it’s tradition, but what, exactly, is the tradition?”
“Well,” I started, trading out the pepper grinder for the salt shaker and jumping a little when a warm, broad handed landed on my shoulder blade, the other hand reaching around me for the carton of broken egg shells. I cleared my throat and went on as his hand fell away from my back and he moved to drop the egg carton into the trash. “Since my first year, I’ve always made some kind of treat or dessert to take for my kids to have after they perform,” I nodded toward the bags of sugar and flour and the tub of sprinkles that had gotten pushed to the back corner of the counter and he came back to stand next to me, his arms crossed loosely over his chest as he leaned back against the stove. “A couple years ago we suffered a pretty devastating half-point loss -”
“Half a point?”
I nodded, “Half a point. It was heart-breaking. I may or may not have used some very grown-up words on the bus ride home with my very not grown-up high school students.” He laughed. “Anyway, everyone was so upset that we all kind of forgot about the chess squares I’d made until we were back at the school unloading our props back into the auditorium. One of the kids said that was the reason we’d lost, because I forgot to give them their dessert.”
He hissed. “Ouch.”
“Yeah,” I nodded again as I ran a little water into the eggs to make them easier to beat then reached just behind him for the whisk. “I didn’t hold it against him, he was sad, but honestly?” I looked up at him as I moved back to my bowl and he nodded, “It hurt. Now logically, I know there was no connection,” I rolled my eyes, “it’s just a silly tradition and we never do the dessert until the bus ride home anyway, and by that point we’d already gotten the results, but still. Superstition is strong in theatre, as I’m sure you know.”
He scoffed. “Oh, I know.” He grinned when I laughed along with him, turning my attention back to the mixing bowl after a couple seconds. He stood quietly at my side, just watching until, satisfied that the yolks and whites were well blended and the salt and pepper were evenly distributed, I pushed the bowl aside. I stepped carefully toward him again and stretched onto my tip-toes to try to reach behind him to the other end of the counter without asking him to move. His eyebrows shot up when he realized what I was doing and he turned to look over his shoulder in the direction that I was reaching. “Cutting board?’
“Please.” I nodded and he turned to grab the cutting board I’d set on top of the toaster oven earlier in my flurry of pulling things out of cabinets and drawers. “Thanks,” our fingers brushed when I closed my hand around the thin slab of bamboo, and if I didn’t know any better, or if he’d been any other single man standing in my kitchen after dark on a Friday night, I’d think that the way his pinkie hooked over mine, just for a second, was intentional, a tentative first move toward something more. As it was though, I knew better.
He pulled away and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Okay, so that explains the baking stuff,” he nodded in the direction of the ingredients for the cookie cake I planned to make next, “but I don’t think all those eggs are going in whatever dessert you’re planning. Especially with the salt and pepper.”
I chuckled then looked up at him with a smirk, “No, but that would be interesting, wouldn’t it?” He nodded and laughed with me. “No, this is breakfast. For the past few years, since our school enrollment went down and our classification changed, all of our comps have been so far away that we have to meet up at the school so early that most of the kids have been awake for a grand total of the 10 minutes it takes them to brush their teeth, stumble out the door, and drive to the school. Breakfast before they show up is out of the question, but so is having them running on fumes. So,” I gestured widely around me at my small kitchen, every inch of limited counter space covered, “I bring them breakfast.”
He shook his head, but his lips curled into a soft smile as he did, and his blue eyes bore gently into mine. “You are something else, you know that?”
I rolled my eyes as I turned my back to him and looked around the counter in front of me, realizing I’d forgotten to pull out the bell peppers and onions. I lifted my hand and flicked my wrist, waving him off as I moved toward the drawer where I kept room temperature produce, “I’m just …” I trailed off, not sure what else to say but needing desperately to deflect the praise and settling for shrugging as I bent to get what I needed.
He grunted, then spoke to my back, “Well, how can I help?”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Oh wait, did I phrase that as a question? Let me fix that - I’m going to help.”
I stood and used my foot to nudge the drawer closed. I furrowed my brow and opened my mouth to protest again, but he started pulling the produce - two sweet yellow onions and one green pepper - from my arms one-by-one and setting them on the cutting board he’d just gotten for me.
“Look,” he said, standing with his back to my workspace and crossing his arms over his chest, his large frame completely blocking me from where I needed to be, “I’m not the cook that you are -,”
“You’ve never had my cooking.”
“I’m not the cook that you are, but I’m here, and I have two hands, so put me to work.”
I opened my mouth again and I took a step forward, thinking he’d back down and step aside to let me through. I was wrong. I made a show of sighing heavily and dropping my shoulders and asked him, “How are your knife skills?”
“My knife skills?”
“Yeah, you know,” I gestured behind him at the vegetables he’d just set down, “chopping? I get the job done, of course, but I’m not super quick or efficient at it, so if you could do that it would actually be a big help.”
“Ooookay,” he drawled, “see, you said ‘knife skills’ and I was about to ask if I needed to call up Sebastian.”
I laughed as he turned to face the cutting board and vegetables and I moved to his side to pull a chef’s knife from the knife block beside the stove. “Yeah no, I don’t need the Winter Soldier in my kitchen, thanks anyway.”
I handed him the knife handle-first and he pointed it at me carefully, holding it close to his chest. “Hey, Bucky is not a villain.”
“Oh, you’ll get no arguments from me there,” I told him as I went to the coffee hutch and pulled a brand new roll of aluminum foil from one of the drawers. I switched directions then and went to the opposite end of the counter from him, just next to the fridge and, and opened the drawer below the bamboo dish draining rack that sat on the counter - the junk drawer. I pulled out a Sharpie and pushed the drawer closed with my hip, turning toward him and smiling, “I’d just rather have you.”
His mouth opened then snapped shut again and he settled for just smiling and nodding a little. “Okay,” he took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling, “what am I doing here?”
“Just chop.”
“Chop. I can do that.” I tried not to laugh at his pep talk to himself and instead grabbed the trash can and pulled it to his side. It took a second for the realization of what it was for to dawn on him, but he lifted an onion and started pulling off the papery skin and I saw it click as he looked down at the skin in his hand before his eyes widened and he dropped it into the open trash can. He winked and shot a finger gun my way as he went back to pulling the skin from the onion. I had to laugh, even as I weighed whether or not I should tell him there was a much easier way to do that. Before I could though, he paused in his peeling to look over at me and ask, “How big?”
I shrugged, bobbing my head side-to-side, “I mean, it doesn’t have to be exact or anything, but pretty small. So dice, I guess, if you want to get technical about it.”
“Yeah,” he scrunched his nose, “let’s just stick with pretty small.”
“Whatever works for you,” I laughed, handing him a smaller mixing bowl I’d just pulled from the same drawer I’d gotten the large one from earlier. “You can just dump them all in there. We’ll saute them together then pour the eggs on top and let it all cook, then I’ll cut it all down to English-muffin size and we’ll throw the sandwiches together.”
It was cute, really, the way he nodded silently, his focus intent on the task before him. His tongue even peeked out of the corner of his mouth just a little. I stood, frozen to my spot, watching him for a few seconds, before I caught myself. I pulled myself from where I stood gazing on as he worked, forcing my limbs to carry me back to the coffee hutch, and started tearing sheets of foil from the roll one-by-one. Eventually, once I’d torn off half the roll or more, I grabbed my sharpie and flipped the stack over and started labelling, using my own system of abbreviations for the different sandwiches that would be wrapped in each foil sheet.
I was so caught up in making sure I labeled the sheets correctly and made the proper number of each one that I hadn’t realized that he had stopped working and come to stand behind me, watching over my shoulder. So when he said, “This is pretty elaborate, you’ve got a whole system here, huh?” I jumped and dropped the Sharpie, my hand flying to my chest as I gasped. “I’m so sorry,” he said, already laughing. One hand flew to my shoulder to steady me, but when I turned, angling myself so that I could see him better, his other hand was gripping his own chest and he was nearly doubled over, his laughter growing stronger and more consuming with every second that passed. “I didn’t mean -” he couldn’t finish the sentence. I rolled my eyes and pushed his hand off my shoulder, stepping around him to go look at the bowl of chopped peppers and onions, the cutting board and knife resting safely in the sink.
My large frying pan was already on the stove, so I turned the burner to medium-high and sprayed the pan with non-stick spray, leaning into the heels of my hands on the front of the stove as I waited for it to heat up. He’d stopped laughing and he cleared his throat gently before resting his hand softly between my shoulder blades. “I really didn’t mean to startle you, I’m sorry.” I turned to look at him over my shoulder, prepared to level him with my best death-glare, but once I caught sight of him, I just couldn’t. He blinked back at me with wide puppy eyes that rivalled Millie’s and mouthed the word sorry yet again. So instead, I rolled my eyes guilelessly and stuck my tongue out at him, making him grin and take half a step closer to watch me as I reached for the bowl of veggies he’d just chopped. “Seriously though,” he started when I picked up the bowl and scooped half the veggies into the pan, making sure to get a roughly even mix of peppers and onions, and they sizzled, “you wanna let me in on your whole plan here so I can help some more?”
I stepped aside and handed him the spatula, gesturing for him to take my place at the stove and reaching to turn the burner down just a bit. “Keep an eye on those and stir them around occasionally. When the onions start to change color you’re going to pour in about about half that egg mixture.”
“So we’re only doing half of everything?” Again, he kept his eyes locked firmly on the job in front of him.
“For now. The pan isn’t big enough, so we have to work in batches. And while you’re cooking the second batch, I’ll start cutting this first batch and putting them on the muffins.”
“And, do I get to learn the secret code?” He didn’t move, not even his head, but he cut his eyes in my direction and smirked.
“It’s not a secret code,” I rolled my eyes and huffed. “Okay, don’t make fun of me, okay?” He nodded and hummed. “Remember, anxiety here, and feeding people is how I show them I care, and caring for people is how I feel good about myself, how I feel like I’m doing the right thing and like -”
“Hey,” he turned his head then and actually looked at me, his hand still moving the spatula through the vegetables absent-mindedly, “you know I’m not going to judge you.” It wasn’t a question, but he kind of said it like one, and didn’t go on until I nodded. “I’m amazed by you and everything you do for people.” I felt myself blushing and ducked my head so that maybe he wouldn’t see just how much. “But I’m gonna need you to tell me what’s with all the foil with the mystery letters, huh, Dopey?” I laughed at the nickname. The only people who’d given me nicknames in a long, long time were my students, and they were never Disney-inspired.
“Okay okay, Bossy.” I answered, making him scoff, as I moved back to the hutch, grabbing a package of English muffins as I went. “So right now you’re working on the first batch of eggs. There will be another batch with peppers and onions, then a couple batches without. I’ve also got ham and cheese. In all, there will end up being eight different combinations of egg, ham, cheese, and veggies, all on English muffins, and there will be three of each type. We’ll wrap them up in all my coded foil,” I teased, “and stack them in a baking dish to store in the fridge overnight. Then while I’m getting ready in the morning I’ll just stick the whole pan in the oven so they’re warm for the kids.”
“Wow,” the pan sizzled again as he poured in the eggs and I stopped splitting the English muffins long enough to watch. I didn’t step any closer because I didn’t want to seem like I was micromanaging or like I didn’t trust him, but the anxious part of me that needed some semblance of control, some knowledge that things weren’t going all to hell, needed to see what was happening. He stopped pouring and set the bowl aside, tilting the pan a bit side-to-side to make sure the egg spread evenly throughout and I smiled. “That’s very organized, very well planned-out.” He said once he was happy with the way the eggs sat in the pan.
“Thanks, that’s what I do,” I joked. He watched the eggs bubble for a couple seconds then turned to look at me, his expression a little lost. “Put the lid on it,” I nodded toward the lid resting on one of the unused burners, “the steam will help cook the top enough that we’ll be able to flip it.”
He stopped with the lid in midair. “We have to flip this?” His eyes were the size of silver dollars and he almost croaked when he said it.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, unless you want to serve my kiddos raw eggs right before they compete, yeah, we have to flip it.”
“Okay but, you’re not gonna expect me to do that,” he waved the spatula in circles over the covered pan, “on my own, are you?”
“Of course not,” I assured him, and he blew a heavy exhale out through his lips, “not until the second one, at least.” I just winked when he whipped his head toward me with wide eyes.
Over the next couple hours, he grew much more comfortable with his cooking skills, and I just grew comfortable, content, in general, working there with him at my side. “Holy crap,” I almost gasped when I pulled the cookie cake from the oven and he reached to turn off the timer and it switched back to displaying the clock. “I had no idea it was almost midnight. I’m so sorry I kept you up all this time.” He’d travelled the majority of the early part of the day, then come straight from the airport to the school to help with rehearsal, then just after take-out at my dining room table I’d started cooking for the next day and he’d joined in almost immediately after. He had to be exhausted.
If he was anywhere as tired as I knew he must be, though, he didn’t let it show, just shrugging. “I couldn’t very well just dust off my hands and head to bed with you out here working, could I?” I lowered my eyebrows mockingly and nodded, mouthing, Yeah as I did. He only rolled his eyes. “No. Besides, I had fun.”
I smiled to myself as I started sprinkling rainbow-colored sprinkles over the still-warm cookie cake. (I’d tried in past years to decorate properly, writing short messages in icing, but it was never anything other than a disaster. That time I’d decided to throw the sprinkles on while the cake was warm and they’d stick, and in the morning I’d run a simple border of icing just around the perimeter of the giant cookie, just so there was some icing there for my sugar-lovers.) I snapped the tub of sprinkles closed and looked at him over my shoulder. “I did too. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had a partner to share the kitchen with. It was really nice.” Victoria had lived with me for a bit after my husband died and after her mom had kicked her out for refusing to be a full-time, unpaid nanny to her younger brothers, but the closest she ever came to helping out in the kitchen was sitting at the table and talking to me while I worked. With him, it was not only nice to have the help, it was just nice to have him there. “You’re a great sous chef, and even better company.”
“Is that what you’re gonna write in my card?” He grinned and tilted his head toward the stack of cards on the table that I’d spent the last several evenings writing for each of my kids, the cards that I would hide somewhere among their personal belongings the following day when they were all in the auditorium watching other schools perform.
“That’ll be part of it,” I joked back. “But I hope you’re not expecting a card tomorrow.”
“No?” He played it off well, but I was pretty sure he actually looked a little hurt.
I shook my head. “Nope. The kids get cards tomorrow because this is,” I felt a sudden pang of sadness before I could finish the sentence, so I took a deep breath and held up a finger to ask for a second’s break as I gathered my composure, my chest constricting and my throat burning a little. That next part, that it’s almost over part, was always hard for me, “This is the end of this particular journey for them and me.” I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling and blinked heavily, trying to keep the tears at bay. This man had already seen me shed far more tears than could possibly be considered acceptable for the relatively short time we’d known each other. Granted, that night’s tears, if they came, would be different - more composed, less of a flood - than the first time; it was pretty standard for me to cry just before or just after our final competition (or sometimes both). Still, it wasn’t something he needed to see.
He stepped closer and gingerly pulled the sprinkles from my hand and set them on the counter, wrapping his other arm around my shoulders and pulling me carefully into his side. I let myself fall over onto him a little, my head resting on his shoulder. He leaned his cheek onto the top of my head and told me, “They’re incredibly blessed they got to go on this journey with you.” I wanted to argue that I was the one who was blessed, that I wouldn’t have survived the past year without them, but I couldn’t put it into words, so I nodded instead.
“And,” he lifted his head off mine after probably half a minute of just holding me and letting me lean against him, “does my lack of a card mean that it’s not the end of a journey for us?”
“Of course it’s not,” I answered, sniffling a little and pulling myself back together, and I was almost sure he pulled me closer for a second, that his hand intentionally slid down my arm until his palm and his long fingers wrapped around the bare skin of my bicep just below the sleeve of the t-shirt I’d changed into before we started cooking, but then I went on, “we have the inauguration next month,” and he stepped back, his hand falling from my arm, and I decided my imagination was playing tricks on me.
“Right,” he nodded when I looked up at him, then set about loading the dishes and utensils we’d been throwing in the sink into the dishwasher. When he was almost finished he added on, “So one more opportunity to hang out, then.”
“Right,” I agreed, and forced myself to smile, but something in the way he said it felt a little emptier than when he’d told me he’d had fun cooking with me, or that my kids had been blessed to have me. “Hey,” I started, then waved him off when he looked over his shoulder at me at the same time that he reached for the sponge and one of the bowls that wouldn’t fit into the full dishwasher, “just leave those,” I told him when he arched an eyebrow. “I’ll run some soap and water in them then put them in the dishwasher when the first load is done.” He put the sponge back into its holder and turned the water on, putting the bowl under it and stacking the remaining dishes inside. When he turned the water off, I went on, “But um, what I was going to say was, I love hanging out with you. It makes me feel normal again. I’m always happy when you’re around, and I just, I appreciate you. A lot.” It took him a second to turn around, he took time first to wipe his hands then the counter with the dish towel hanging from the handle on the front of the oven, but when he did his smile reached his eyes again.
“I’m happy when I’m around you, too,” he told me before pushing off the counter behind him. “But uh,” he shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets, “I guess it’s time for you to head to bed, yeah? Go join Miss Millie?” My rotten pup had trotted off to bed a couple hours earlier, after finally giving up on dancing around my feet to try to take me along with her.
I scoffed. “I wish.”
He looked around us. “What else do you have to do? I’ll help.” He’d already teased me about all my preparations earlier, while the cookie cake was in the oven - the supplies I’d gathered and packed into a tote bag that had been put by the front door, the stack of cards I’d gone through twice to make sure I hadn’t missed anyone, the binder of paperwork that I’d skimmed over ‘one last time,’ three times.
I shook my head and headed for the living room, switching off the kitchen lights as I went. “It’s not that,” I dropped into the recliner and watched him cross in front of me to sit gingerly just at the front edge of the couch cushion on the end closest to me. “I just don’t sleep the night before comps.”
“That sounds … healthy,” he tilted his head to the side and lifted that same eyebrow, looking across the end table at me sarcastically.
“It’s not intentional!” I cried defensively. “For the first couple years I tried. Seriously. But I’d just lay there tossing and turning, my mind racing and anxiety driving me bananas. And me driving my husband bananas,” I acknowledged with a guilty grimace. “So I just quit trying. Sometimes I read, sometimes I watch movies or binge a series I’m into, and I usually end up drifting off out here eventually for the last couple hours or so before my alarm goes off. Last time I ended up down a 90s music YouTube rabbit hole. I think I drifted off somewhere between Ace of Base and the Counting Crows.”
“Ooh!” He bolted upright and his eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Let’s do that!”
“You don’t have to stay up with me,” I told him, smiling at his sincere kindness. “Seriously, go on to bed. I’ll be fine.”
“No,” he practically gasped, “I want to!” He patted the seat next to him on the couch, “Come on!”
I laughed. “Okay, okay. How about this. You go change, I’ll do the same and grab an extra blanket and my computer. If we’re gonna do this, we might as well be comfortable.” He was off the couch like a shot and almost all the way to the guest room at the end of the hall before I’d even gotten out of the recliner. There was a tiny, nagging part of me that still felt a little guilty, but it was impossible to miss his enthusiasm and excitement, so I couldn’t feel that bad.
A few minutes later I came back out of my own room, soft, well-worn pajamas on, contacts traded out for glasses, messy bun brushed out so my hair fell around my shoulders in unruly waves, and my arms loaded down with the velour throw blanket that lived at the foot of my bed, a spare pillow, and my laptop. He hopped up from his previous spot at the end of the couch and met me in the middle of the living room to start pulling things from my arms. He took the computer first from where it perched almost precariously under my chin and set it safely on the coffee table, then he grabbed the pillow by both ends, fluffing them together a couple times. He looked at me with a smirk and asked, “Are we camping out?”
I shrugged. “I wanted us both to be comfortable. This way you can use both of the couch pillows.”
“Well. That’s very kind of you,” he laid the pillow much more gently than necessary toward the center of the couch then started to sit back where he’d been when I came into the room.
“No,” I stopped him, and he looked up at me, frozen in a half-squat, startled, “you take the good end.” I shuffled the blanket a little in my arms and pointed to the chaise end of the couch.
“I’m not gonna -”
“Just trust me. You take the good end.” He huffed but obeyed, standing upright again and shuffling until he stood in the corner created by the main portion of the couch and the chaise that came out at a right angle on one end. He turned his back to the corner and dropped onto the couch, leaning back so that his right arm ran the length of the couch arm and his left fell on the cushions running along the back.
“Happy?”
“Yep,” I nodded. “Now,” I made a shooing motion with one hand, “feet up.” He looked up at me skeptically but I just narrowed my eyes and fake-glared at him until he did as he was told. Once he looked to be settled, his legs stretched long in front of him until his socked feet almost reached the end of the chaise and his shoulders and upper back pressed into the cushion behind him, I dropped the throw I was holding right on top of the pillow he’d placed in the middle of the couch and pulled the buttery-soft knit blanket - not cashmere, but a passable department store substitute - from the back of the couch and unfolded it, shaking it over him by two corners until it fluttered down over his legs. “You’re a bigger human, you get the bigger blanket.” I grinned a little sheepishly and he chuckled. I grabbed the throw pillow from the opposite end of the couch and held it out to him. “You’re kinda sitting on the other one,” I told him as he took it from me.
“Ooh, I like this,” he said, running his hands over the soft cable knit pattern on the pillow. They were new since the last time he’d been there. I hadn’t bought them because of him - I had no reason to think he’d ever be back in my house, honestly - but he’d been the first visitor I’d had in longer than I could remember, if you didn’t count Victoria (or the film crew, but they’d moved out a lot of my own furniture anyway to make space for their equipment and the cameras had followed him and me so closely that the furniture and accessories that remained were barely noticeable) and just having a visitor made me realize how I’d kind of let my house go. It was clean, of course, and everything was in working order; I just hadn’t tended to any of those little things that made a house feel like a home. On top of that, I’d never actually lived alone before, so I’d never decorated a home just for myself, and my husband had been much more about practicality than style, meaning we’d always had a very simple house, very much function over form. So the weekend after Chris’s last visit, I’d picked up my friend Rachel and had her go shopping with me. It wasn’t a shopping spree, by any means, but I’d picked up a few things for the house that were all me , that made it feel more like my home, including the blanket I’d just thrown over him and the pillows he was currently tucking behind his head and nestling into his side.
“Why am I not surprised?” I teased as I sat on the couch about halfway between him and the arm on the other end, putting my own pillow between us so I could lean on it.
He shrugged, “I like sweaters.”
I laughed softly as I pulled my own legs up onto the couch and unfolded the smaller blanket over them, shifting until I sat mostly on my hip, my elbow pressing into my pillow so my shoulder rested near his and my feet pressed into the arm at the opposite end of the couch. I leaned forward to grab my computer from where he’d put it on the coffee table, opening it as I sat back. I went straight to YouTube and navigated to the playlist I’d used to jumpstart my little musical adventure the last time and rested the computer between us, right beside his thigh and in front of my forearm.
Halfway through the second song, he’d clearly settled in well, his body angled a little more toward mine and his head bobbing as he hummed along to Alanis Morissette. I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop fidgeting. Every few seconds I’d readjust the pillow I’d put between us and shift my upper body, trying to find just the right spot. In my mind, this set-up had worked so well, but in reality, every time I started to get comfortable I found myself sinking slowly down into the cushions, bringing my upper body closer to his. I was overcome with worry that I was encroaching too much on his personal space, that he was going to think that I was trying to turn things into something they weren’t. I had that fear more often than I liked to admit when it came to him, actually. Because even if I thought I was in a place to start dating, to make a move on anyone , I would never be so presumptuous, so insane, as to do it to him. I wasn’t always entirely sure that I knew what we were, but I did know that it was very much not that. And that was good. It was good for me, because I knew I had no business considering being in a relationship again yet, and it was good for him too. Even if I wasn’t newly widowed, wasn’t too broken and messed up to consider myself a good partner for anyone right then, I would never have been a good enough match for him. I knew that. Not that I thought it was something he’d wanted, or even considered, for so much as a second. I knew better, hell, I still couldn’t sort out what on earth made him even want to be friends with me. But god, like I’d told him before, I appreciated that friendship more than I could begin to say.
“Hey,” he finally said, and when I craned my neck to look up at him he was frowning a little, “you okay?”
“Yeah,” I huffed, “I just, in my mind this was more comfortable.”
He chuckled and I had to force myself not to jump when his hand, which had been tapping along to the music on the back couch cushion, fell to curl softly around my shoulder and upper arm. “Here,” he used his free hand to grab my pillow and wrestle it a little until he had it standing on one end and running up his side. “Now,” he pulled a little with the hand on my shoulder, “c-mere.” He tugged me closer until my shoulder hit the middle of the pillow and my head rested on the top of it. “This okay?”
“Much better,” I nodded.
“Good.” His hand went right back to the back of the couch where it had been and I released a breath I’d been holding without realizing it.
I don’t know when I fell asleep. I know that we watched - and made fun of - a lot of music videos before eventually we both went quiet, watching in sleepy silence. I know that when I woke up, the computer had gone dark and the only light was the dim glow of the light over the stove, just barely visible across the dining room and around the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. I know that I jumped when I heard a low snore above my head and that I didn’t realize until just then that his hand rested on my arm. And I know that I considered, strongly considered, getting up and heading to my bed, only changing my mind when I sat up to check my phone, plugged in on the end table at my feet, and saw that there was only about an hour until the alarm was set to go off, and he shifted, turning away from me and curling around the pillow he’d tucked between himself and the arm of the couch. I decided it wasn’t worth going to bed, instead closing the computer and putting it on the coffee table and moving my pillow away from him and to the opposite end, laying down that way and pulling my knees toward my chest so that my feet weren’t touching his leg, or worse, his butt.
After all, we were friends, and the last thing I needed was to lose that because of something stupid like kicking (or practically molesting) him in my sleep.